1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a transfer assembly for transferring glass articles.
2. Description of Related Art
As is known, hollow glass articles are formed in molds, each comprising two half-molds movable between a closed molding position, and an open position to remove the formed glass article from the mold. From the molds, the glass articles are placed on top of a supporting surface, from which they are subsequently transferred onto a linear conveyor which feeds them successively to the output of the system.
The glass articles are transferred from the supporting surface to the linear conveyor by a transfer assembly, which moves them along a substantially 90° arc, and comprises a pickup member for engaging one or more articles to be transferred; a movable supporting arm fitted integrally with the pickup member; a pneumatic linear actuator for moving the supporting arm and the pickup member horizontally to and from the glass articles; and a rotary actuator for rotating the supporting arm, about a fixed vertical hinge axis, between a pickup position to remove the articles off the supporting surface, and an unloading position to deposit the articles onto the linear conveyor.
With the increase in the output rate of molding systems, known transfer assemblies of the above type have proved increasingly inefficient and unreliable. This is mainly due to the pickup member being connected integrally to the supporting arm, which makes it extremely difficult to set and make fast corrections to the pickup positions and the unloading positions onto the conveyor, and, above all, makes it difficult to feed the articles along predetermined paths without the articles being spun off the pickup member by centrifugal force, which inevitably increases as the output rate gets faster, due to the rotation speed of the arm about the hinge axis.